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[Deadbeat]

You know how someone joked in saying that the Switch is probably as capable as the Wii U?

 

[RedSwirl]

People are still expecting a lot of western AAA multiplats? Let it go. It's not happening. Switch will almost certainly get 32GB cards at launch or soon after, and probably eventually 64GB cards too, but I just don't think Nintendo expects EA and them to fall in line.

The Switch right now seems to be a response to the Japanese market, and just take a look at the file sizes of modern Japanese games. They're considerably smaller than western AAA games. I don't think I've seen a single Japanese game go over maybe 25GB, and that's for the big stuff like Dark Souls 3, Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain (without updates), or Wii U Smash Bros. Maybe the PC versions of the FFXIII games are bigger because of the duplicate FMVs and dual audio. I think FFX and X-2 combined are 40GB. FFXV might be the first major Japanese game that by itself goes beyond 30GB for the base game. Dragon Quest Builders on PS4 isn't even a gig.

--Dragon Quest Builders (PS4): 869MB
--World of Final Fantasy (PS4): 8.8GB
--Dark Souls III (PS4): 17GB
--Transformers Devastation (PS4): 10GB
--Xenoverse 2 (PS4): 12GB

 

[C-Drive]

I keep on thinking Nintendo has developed some kind of insane compression technique.

 

[Kysen]

I don't think the carts are going to be cheap. 16GB is also paltry compared to a 50p blu ray.

 

[Phoenixus]

I like that if digital downloads are around the same size. My 128 gig card won't get filled up too quick if that's the case.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

I do wonder if Nintendo will provide whatever dark magic compression tools they use for their own games.

That said I wonder if the MAX cartridge they provide at launch is either 32 or 64 GB

 

[Discokuningas]

This is probably just minimum. At least not maximum. Looking this thread I think this should be in the title.

 

[RPGCrazied]

What? That can't be good. Are games going to be 2D or something?

 

[Elfforkusu]

Standard = minimum?

Question is, what's the max?

 

[Instro]

Standard meaning they will not produce any cards with a lower capacity than that.

 

[Kelegacy]

Most Wii U games were not even close to 16 gb and they looked great. Don't think this will be an issue for Nintendo games.

Eh, most are still not full hd and full of jaggies. Nintendos own games look cleaner though.

 

[notaskwid]

Eh, most are still not full hd and full of jaggies. Nintendos own games look cleaner though.

Switch's screen is 720p though.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Switch's screen is 720p though.

And other insider sources say it clocks up after being docked to support native 1080p, the same insiders that reported a 720 screen. What's your point.

 

[Movalpolos]

No worries. Big third party games will obviously ship on multiple game cards.

Spoiler

/s

So that's why it's called Switch.
Well duh, I feel so stupid now.

 

[Galava]

Devs have become used to not compress games that much anymore due to knowing that people have or will buy a bigger HDD. Read speeds are not a problem anymroe when it comes to gaming, so games taking up 100GB are the norm, cutting development time, less time compressing textures, which usually take up most of the space.

A lot of today's games could fit on less than 30GB, look at the amazing games years ago that didn't take that much space.

Also, expect the Switch to have a microSD slot just like New3DS.

 

[DeuceGamer]

Standard is a way of saying minimum. So even if a game is 4GB, it will be released in a 16GB card.

This, but I expect plenty of people over reacting to this.

 

[LordRaptor]

Devs have become used to not compress games that much anymore due to knowing that people have or will buy a bigger HDD. Read speeds are not a problem anymroe when it comes to gaming, so games taking up 100GB are the norm (also cuts development time, less time compressing stuff).

A lot of today's games could fit on less than 30GB, look at the amazing games years ago that didn't take that much space.

Also, expect the Switch to have a microSD slot just like New3DS.

Decompressing certain filetypes in software also takes cpu cycles, and current gen consoles have really shitty single threaded cpu power.

FWIW the Tegra X1 supports hardware HEVC compression / decompression.

 

[Hermii]

Its enough for Nintendo so its standard. Doesn't mean they don't come higher.

 

[NimbusD]

Being as there's literally nothing holding it back from being larger other than physical limitations, which are way higher than that, I don't believe this is accurate at all.

What would be the reason for Nintendo imposing this on developers? To save a few bucks per game sold?

 

[_Ryo_]

But what if the game is less than a GB?

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Here is a listing of install sizes for 460 PS4 games, it covers the games released up to end of 2015.
https://www.finder.com/complete-list-playstation-4-install-sizes-460-titles

It seems that 16gb is enough for Just Dance

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Being as there's literally nothing holding it back from being larger other than physical limitations, which are way higher than that, I don't believe this is accurate at all.

What would be the reason for Nintendo imposing this on developers? To save a few bucks per game sold?

It could be accurate. Nothing implies this is the required size or that it's being imposed on anyone.

 

[Galava]

Decompressing certain filetypes in software also takes cpu cycles, and current gen consoles have really shitty single threaded cpu power.

FWIW the Tegra X1 supports hardware HEVC compression / decompression.

Still, lazyness is overtaking development. The latest CoD is proof of that.

 

[mugurumakensei]

Being as there's literally nothing holding it back from being larger other than physical limitations, which are way higher than that, I don't believe this is accurate at all.

What would be the reason for Nintendo imposing this on developers? To save a few bucks per game sold?

Uh, this is the minimum. We know from rumors 32 GB carts are also an option even at launch. Following tradition, 64 GB carts are likely to appear within a year or two after launch with even 128 GB being a possibility eventually. Greatest delta I believe is N64 with standard size being 4 MB with resident evil being 64 MB(16x standard size). The equivalent here would be making 256 GB carts available(not likely as even wasteful games are under 100 GB).

 

[cw_sasuke]

Most WiiU games were less than 16gb - not surprising. Many PS4/XBO games are that large because they can be that large, not because they need to.

 

[Gamepad]

Most WiiU games were less than 16gb - not surprising. Many PS4/XBO games are that large because they can be that large, not because they need to.

540p/720p vs 1080p.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Who are WSJ and are they credible? They seem to have sprung out of nowhere lately with Switch news and some of it sounds dubious tbh.

I come to the Neogaf for posts like these, thanks

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The early "standard" cartridge for the N64 was like 4MB and RE2 came out on a 64MB cart so...yeah. You're probably right.

8MB was the early standard, but some 4MB games did exist.

That's not fine, IMO. Should be at least around 25GB available at the start for any devs that want to make use of more space.

So they get a 32GB card. Done. Not all will need it.

Yea but whats the max?

PURE SPECULATION: DS card sizes were 8MB-512MB. 3DS cards were 128MB-8GB. Simply following that pattern of 16x increases (which is pretty similar to the increases seen between the old cartridge systems too) I would predict the next Nintendo portable cartridge format would be designed for 2GB-128GB. When someone decides to release one of the larger ones, I wonder if we'll get a lot of people talking about how the disc-based systems are going to have trouble with third parties.

Oh, I thought it was bigger. Nice compression work from Bethesda.

It's mostly the original game assets with some new effects--not like fancy lighting and fog need 10 extra gigabytes.

Being as there's literally nothing holding it back from being larger other than physical limitations, which are way higher than that, I don't believe this is accurate at all.

What would be the reason for Nintendo imposing this on developers? To save a few bucks per game sold?

Standard doesn't mean it's imposed. It's just a minority of games (albeit some of the most well-known) that use more.

 

[Doctre81]

16 Gig is the minimum
64 GiG is probably the max

 

[Valhalla Rapids]

looks like people dont understand that the given 16gb is the MINIMUM. as usual Nintendo Doomsayers jump on something with very little real information.

 

[notaskwid]

And other insider sources say it clocks up after being docked to support native 1080p, the same insiders that reported a 720 screen. What's your point.

The point is higher resolution doesn't necessarily warrant bigger file sizes, a game in pc is the same size whether you run it at 240p or 4k. Third party games look particularly jaggy on WiiU when compared to Nintendo games that are at the same resolution because of it, but because of the effort that goes into them.

 

[Mpl90]

If we combine this (by repeating, for the 1,000th time in this thread already, that standard!= maximum, more like minimum), and what part of the major Eurogamer leak back in July stated (Nintendo recommending 32GBs to developers), I see this scenario:

16GB - minimum size, games that don't require more than that use this
32GB - the recommended choice by Nintendo itself

Also, I wanted to know how much space can be saved by compressing audio and videos, since I've read some posts here stating how much less bloated some games would be in that case. Any actual example?

 

[-shadow-]

Well this is going to be terrible if true. A lot of games easily reach, and even go past, the 50GB :/

Compressed audio is a curse.

Nintendo is still compressing most of their music down to 32Khz and 16-bit despite them having a whooping 25GB available. It's bugs me to no end that they don't even bother with CD quality in the year 2016!

 

[Bulbasaur]

People need to remember before over-reacting that this is standard, not maximum

And also that Nintendo are great at compressing their games.

 

[mugurumakensei]

16 Gig is the minimum
64 GiG is probably the max

128 GB could be the max if a third party absolutely need > 64 GB. With current technology, it's doable. I'd have to imagine Nintendo would only approve it for a really big franchises though.

 

[Sesuadra]

Well this is going to be terrible if true. A lot of games easily reach, and even go past, the 50GB :/

FFS it's standard size not maximum size.

 

[Ridley327]

Standard is a way of saying minimum. So even if a game is 4GB, it will be released in a 16GB card.

Yeah, that's basically how it was on the Vita, where the only card size was 4GB.

 

[jett]

The games will run directly from cartridges. There will be nothing to unpack or install. The flash memory reader will be much faster than a spinning disc.

We're talking about digital games here.

 

[LordKano]

If we combine this (by repeating, for the 1,000th time in this thread already, that standard!= maximum, more like minimum), and what part of the major Eurogamer leak back in July stated (Nintendo recommending 32GBs to developers), I see this scenario:

16GB - minimum size, games that don't require more than that use this
32GB - the recommended choice by Nintendo itself

Also, I wanted to know how much space can be saved by compressing audio and videos, since I've read some posts here stating how much less bloated some games would be in that case. Any actual example?

I remember there was a case with Titanfall where most of the game size was due to the audio files were uncompressed. The Xbox One version is 20gb, a reasonable amount, but the PC version is up to 50, and the explanation was that the PC version used uncompressed audio files, which beefed up the file size.

More details here : http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03...een-xbox-one-and-pc-explained-35-gb-of-audio/

 

[Cid Highwind]

I thought Nintendo was suggesting using 32GB cards? I could have sworn that was stated by one of the more reputable sources but it was probably just a rumor.

 

[LordRaptor]

Also, I wanted to know how much space can be saved by compressing audio and videos, since I've read some posts here stating how much less bloated some games would be in that case. Any actual example?

Uncompressed audio using the MP3 codec can be compressed down by a ratio of 11:1 at 128kb/s, 9:1 at 160kb/s and 7:1 at 192kb/s.

So 10GB of audio files at 128kb/s would be less than 1GB compressed.

 

[leburn98]

Gears of War 4 is 74GB on my HDD right now

Which quite frankly shows how carried away things have become. There is no reason why a linear third person shooter should be 74GB, especially when games like the Witcher 3 (40GB) can have a massive open world with over 100 hrs of gameplay and nearly 1000 voiced characters. Games have become too bloated by relying on pre-rendered cutscenes, uncompressed audio, etc.

 

[Somnid]

Uncompressed audio using the MP3 codec can be compressed down by a ratio of 11:1 at 128kb/s, 9:1 at 160kb/s and 7:1 at 192kb/s.

So 10GB of audio files at 128kb/s would be less than 1GB compressed.

There's also a bunch of modern codecs that are both smaller and have higher quality. MP3 sucks.

 

[-shadow-]

FFS it's standard size not maximum size.

I don't think I've ever said anything about it being the maximum possible size. But considering a lot of games are larger and companies on the 3DS already started asking more money for a mere 4GB cartridge this can go any direction which is what I'm personally worried about. Also, chill out...

 

[StayDead]

uh oh regular sized games are 40-50gb+ this doesn't look good for third parties.

Badly compressed games are 40-50GB+ if we're being honest. PC game sizes don't usually come close to this.

 

[RootCause]

But what if the game is less than a GB?

Digital only?

 

[LordRaptor]

There's also a bunch of modern codecs that are both smaller and have higher quality. MP3 sucks.

Sure, but MP3 is what people are most familiar with

 

[frankie_baby]

Uncompressed audio using the MP3 codec can be compressed down by a ratio of 11:1 at 128kb/s, 9:1 at 160kb/s and 7:1 at 192kb/s.

So 10GB of audio files at 128kb/s would be less than 1GB compressed.

Isn't mp3 a pretty poor compression standard even? If i remember right 64kb/s aac is the equivalent quality to 256kb/s mp3

 

[SinCityAssassin]

I thought Nintendo was suggesting using 32GB cards? I could have sworn that was stated by one of the more reputable sources but it was probably just a rumor.

Rumor was recommended was 32 GB if the game is large, standard would be 16 GB because it's less expensive.

Exactly how the 3DS was handled, 2 GB was the standard minimum for 3DS but their maximum was 8.

 

[kagamin]

Badly compressed games are 40-50GB+ if we're being honest. PC game sizes don't usually come close to this.

The only game that I can think of that I own and have installed that exceeds this is... GTAV V... yea.